Strong opinions, weakly held

Steven Berlin Johnson has a good post on the causes of the Dean campaign’s recent troubles. Basically, his point is that it’s stupid to blame the Internet, social software, or any of the things that people thought were great and innovative about Dean just a few weeks ago. People knew all along that all of that innovation was necessary to combat Dean’s inherent weaknesses as a candidate. As it turns out, they didn’t go as far as Dean supporters would have liked in combatting them. Frankly, I hope that every Democratic candidate in the future learns the many positive lessons from the Dean campaign. I honestly think it’s too late for a Dean comeback at this point, but the Democratic party owes Dean a huge debt of gratitude for showing other politicians the way forward.